Backyard Water Basement Flooding!!! HELP!!!

Hi, I'm new to the forum and have read a lot of great advice and wondered if I may get some help as well. I have a VERY small backyard and the area that I live in floods often when we get heavy rain. Unfortunately the architects that developed this area years ago, did little to help prevent standing water for many of the current homeowners. The neighbors behind me are on much higher ground, and the result is lots of water in my yard, so much so that if it rains a few days in a week, I have standing, stagnate water in much of my backyard. The lowest point in my backyard is right next to the house and therefore causes flooding in my finished basement (not much fun to clean up). I assume that this has been a problem for some time because 2 of the 4 windows in the basement have been covered over at some time or another.

I have attached pictures of the most recent flooding to show where most of the water collects and hopefully give a visual as to the sloping from our backyard neighbors; these pictures were taken after my husband and I tried a "one day" fix to quickly divert water from sitting directly next to the foundation of the house.

We have the piping to construct a french drainage system; however we can't take the drainage system from the backyard through the side/front yard without causing harm to our neighbor and causing her yard to flood or running into her drainage system. She has no idea exactly what kind of drainage she has and doesn't want to risk damage or flooding (I don't blame her). We also happen to live in an older neighborhood that has older water drains and those of us who have had to replace those drains have no clue where the older ones are?.?.

Is there a way to construct a french drain system and use it to divert water to an area where we could have a VERY SMALL pond of sorts?? I'm assuming the pond or end drainage point would need to be very deep to contain the water, but I'm not certain what else there is to do to help with our backyard 'sludge' and basement flooding. We are seeing the beginnings of cracking in the foundation wall and don't want the problem to get any worse, we also don't want to fix the foundation only to have it start cracking again...we want to ensure the flooding stops now, the cracking foundation is fixed so current problems don't get worse.

Any solutions or advice for my problem would be greatly appreciated. We don't want to hire anyone, and my husband is handy enough and smart enough to follow instruction with regards to digging trenches and installing drains....I just want to make certain anything we might do would work before we do it.

Thanks in advanced to anyone with any helpful suggestions....

Kittykat, You must stop the water from reaching the foundation, that is imperative! Think of yourself, not as the little Dutchman with his finger in the dike.
If you construct a surface channel for the water that is running onto your property from the uphill lot, and have that channel flow to the lower of the two sides of your property, you may then divert that water into a channel above ground, or a pipe/conduit below ground, with small inspection points, much like mini-manholes that would be used to keep the water running down hill. At the bottom of the run you could construct a "pond" or cistern to collect that water, and if you wished, add the runoff water from your roof. Screens of some type are essential to keep major debris from clogging the system. As an example, just look at the screens along the road to filter rain water off the roadways. The size of the screen will mandate the frequency of the screen cleaning, and system cleaning. No screens, and you could have rubber ducky races in heavy rains! Remember, Keep Your Powder Dry!

nukes answered it. This on dry wells, it depends on your soil condition:

http://pwd.org/pdf/water_resources/conservation fact sheets/dry_wells.pdf

and: Foundation Drainage

This has using a cleaner later: Drainage pipe, drain tile, and fittings for a French drain installation

Hope it gives you some direction. Be safe, G

Can you direct the water to the street, or a municipal storm drain? If you truly are the low spot on all sides, then you would have to build one hell of a pond (essentially, right now, you ARE the pond).

Also, you might consider channeling the water before it reaches your foundation - like maybe at the fence line

Its hard to tell from the pictures where to channel the water but it MUST be done. You should extend the downspouts out at least 4 feet and have all ground slope away from the foundation. Make sure your gutters are not clogged too. If you can do that all the way around your house my guess is you will likely fix your water in the basement problem.